Other stuff

Friday, 9 December 2011

When he says floss, I floss.

LATCHMERE LEISURE
CENTRE

Burns Road, Battersea,

London SW11 5AD

020 7207 8004

Added bonus: I can cross Latchmere off my list

Negative: I realise my
dentist is fallible.

I’m very obedient when
it comes to my teeth, which may be explained by the fact that my dad was a
dentist. My dentist now is the Action Man of the mouth, and I always do what he
says. When he says floss, I floss. When he says rinse, I rinse. When he told me it was good at the
Latchmere at around 7am, I went to the Latchmere at around 7am.

I have previous with
this pool; I bought my babies here many many times. This is how it would go: I
would try, tongue out in concentration, to manoeuvre my tiny car into the
sliver of space between two huge Battersea tractors, the effort bringing me out
in a sweat; I’d lug the small happy child and various bags to the pool. Either
I’d undress the child first or myself, but either way was tricky, particularly
in the days before they could walk (when you had to find some way to balance
them) or in the days when they could walk (when they’d try to escape and bump
their heads before we’d even start). Temperature at this point: very hot. We’d
head to the water. Child stands on the edge, reluctantly. I encourage. Child
falls over on slippy tiles. I get cross. Child goes in. We bob around. I get
very cold. I have to decide - shoulders under to keep warm, or standing up
ankle deep in kid piss. Child tries the big slide but gets scared at the top. I
stand there saying ‘come on! There’s children waiting! Come on! It’s not so
scary. OH FOR FUCK SAKE COME DOWN THE FUCKING SLIDE.’ I look at the clock - we’ve been here for three minutes. We
bob some more. I try and invent games. The games are too scary. I try and make
eye contact with other bobbing mummies. They are too busy making eye contact
with their own children. While my attention is elsewhere, child slides
underwater, and scrabbles at my costume to get head above water. Child cries. People stare. Child
discovers they love the slide and go up and down up and down up and down a
hundred times. I lie on the pool floor waiting. Time to get out! Child won’t get out. I drag them out by
one arm. One of us is crying. Temperature at this point: catastrophic. Aaaah.
Fun times.

And here I am, back at
the Latchmere! No expectations! You may note that I try not to write negatively
about receptionists because I don’t like punching down, so I’m not mentioning
these two. I go through to change. It has that acid kick of old sick. It’s a bit early for
that. I go through to the pool area. Are you ready?

This is a massive space.
You come out under a galleried café area, which used to have railings round but
is now enclosed, presumably to stop people throwing Monster Munch at the
swimmers. There’s a mish-mash of floor materials but the walls are great brick
facades; one has a kind of rusting metal mesh covering, the
stuff they use on Grand Designs before they pour the concrete in. Shuttering? They’ve
randomly hung things on it, sagging banners and signs. Plastic plants fail to
give it a tropical feel. The ceiling is bright yellow with massive white ducts big
enough for people to actually live in. There are windows up high, but nothing that lets you see outside, maybe to maintain the illusion of being in a tropical beach paradise. There’s a teaching pool and a ‘leisure
pool’, with a sloping ‘beach’ that goes down into a deeper, laned area; at the deepest
end there’s a badly-executed
picture in the tiles – feebly-coloured parrots and splashes. I get flashbacks to the wave machine,
but it’s not working today, or at least, not at 7am. To one side is a large grey elephant, its trunk
split to form the slide; there's a smaller split seal slide in the baby pool, and there used to be a plastic turtle resting on the
‘shore’, but it’s gone. Admittedly, the turtle was a bit of a hazard, a hard
lump of slidey ridged plastic that children weren’t allowed to climb on because
when they (inevitably) fell off they’d land on the hard tiled floor, so there was a constant
pip of whistles from lifeguards as persistent toddlers tried to clamber up the
shell. In the shallows is a large round tiled ‘planter’, with one tragic plastic
palm that looks like it's endured a hurricane; tinsel-wrapped, it still emits no sense
of festive joy. Here’s a tip: if you’re buying plastic trees, choose ones
that look alive. This one doesn’t provide verite. It provides a lingering sense of failure.

I wade down to the laned
bit, demarcated by the floor tiles which go from blue to yellow and white, and
start swimming.

Two problems. The water is hot, and
grubby, but that’s not it. 1) The lane divider was a length of orange rope,
without the usual bobbly floats. I couldn’t really see it properly, so kept
scraping my arms on it. I’m normally perfectly capable of swimming in a
straight line, which leads me on problem 2). The lanes go across the slope of
the pool, not with it. I constantly felt like I was being pulled deeper. It was
like trying to sleep on a sloping mattress and nearly rolling out of bed all
night. Like swimming slightly drunk. I wasn’t. It’s a weird kind of effort,
doing that. You know when you swim in the sea and you’re not quite sure of
which way the tides are pulling you and it makes you a bit anxious? That, only with exasperation rather than anxiety. The only reason I kept swimming was the
thought of facing that sick smell in the changing room again.

When I started itching,
I got out. In the shower (which was meh, OK) a sticker on the door told me to
have some ‘me’ time. I hate the concept of ‘me time’, a ghastly invention. We never used to have 'me' time, and we were fine. I blame Margaret Thatcher – no, really, I actually do. It was her who started
this whole bloody me time thing, once she’d figured out a way to maximise
profit from icecream and ruin our social housing stock. I’ve had ‘me time’. I
discovered I prefer ‘anyone but me’ time. As I stripped, I noticed my skin was very blotchy red.
Angry red. Right down my legs, like
hives. The palms of my hands, even. Fire red! Never been that bad before. Bloody Latchmere. The sick smell had abated a bit though. I went home to brush my teeth with my dentist-recommended brush.

This morning, I have
learned a valuable lesson. My dentist may know about teeth. I will follow his
guidance on oral hygiene like a zealot. But I know about pools. And he’s wrong,
this is not a swimmers pool. Not at 7am. Not at 7pm. Nor at any time in
between.

4 comments:

I had similar experiences with my kids. It was a blessing when I discovered the lido. I remember well the itchy hot stinky environment of the Latchmere. And the changing room annoyed me so much I starting bringing some floor detergent and a scrubbing cloth. I'd put my kids on the bench, clean the floor, spread one of the towels on the floor and have them change on it. When I got home I'd wash all our costumes and the towel on furiously hot water. Iiiiirrrrrckk!